Ranger Nietzsche
16-01-2008, 06:05
Disclaimer
This guide was written in Dec. 2006 and may contain some out of date information, I have updated it briefly to remove blatant errors.
What this guide needs:
-Assessment of CURRENT popular edenial skills such as PowerLeak and ESurge
************************************************** ******
Guide originally posted by David Holtzman with editing by Ranger Nietzsche for dated information.
************************************************** ******
A basic guide to Energy Denial; or, you and your mana.
This guide will cover the two basic aspects of energy denial (abbreviated edenial): edenying someone, and being edenied.
What the heck is an edenialer anyways?
The purpose of the energy denialer is to, unsurprisingly, deny the enemy their energy. The reason for this is simple: a person has a set of skills. Except for signets (like rez sig or heal sig) and adrenaline based skills (like sever artery and eviscerate), those skills require a certain amount of energy to use. The premise is clear, if the enemy does not have the mana, he cannot power his skills. This turns him into a useless character.
So, how do you go about getting rid of someone’s energy? Well, the game has a number of skills that remove energy from people, specifically in the mesmer domination line and in the ranger no attribute line. These skills work in the same way as all skills: you target the person and activate the skill. There are two basic types of edenialer, the domination mesmer and the ranger edenialer.
************************************************** *******
Note:Dedicated Edenialers used to be popular, but edenial usually is now found as a utility part of a more general skill bar.
************************************************** *******
Who to target, and why.
Knowing who to target as an edenial player is just as important as effectively ednying someone. Edenying for example a signet mesmer will have roughly the same effect as not edenying anyone at all.
In terms of edenying someone, the best target is the one whom your skills are effective against, that represents the biggest threat. It is important to note that by threat, I do not necessarily mean the opposing player who deals the most damage. It is often the case that enemy healers are the biggest threat, as they are the ones allowing the enemy damage dealers to deal their damage.
The first thing an edenialer needs to do is determine the biggest threat. This is simply an act of judgment based on situational awareness. Some questions to ask include: What does the other team have? What concept is the team working on? Is there anyone especially vulnerable to edenial?
For example, it may be a good idea when facing a spike to start by denying their spikers. In a conditions build denying rangers may be the best choice, as they are very weak against edenial. Or, it may simply be most efficient to edeny monks first so as to get kills in quickly.
Above all though, the most important part of an edenialer’s job is communication. Especially when edenying with allied partners, it is extremely important to always know who you are on and who they are on, at all times. If you double up on a target you will effectively be wasting one of your edenialers. Instead of doing something useful, he’ll just be burning away the remnants of someone else’s targets.
Different types of energy
In general, the enemy will have two types of energy. His general energy, and his energy reserve. The general energy is the energy that is normally in his bar. This is what he’ll work off of in general, and it’s always accessible by edenial skills. The energy reserve is his emergency energy, pools of it hidden away in offhand switches and armor switches (though the latter of these is not common). As an edenialer your job is to stop your target from casting. How then are you supposed to stop your target if he can access his reserve energy? Well, this is where it starts to get tricky, and it is the reason gale is so effective (as mentioned above).
When an opponent switches to his reserve energy set, his reserve this then accessible by edenial skills. When this happens, you can use as many as possible before he hides his reserve again. It’s true that his reserve will regenerate to maximum capacity and you won’t be able to stop it, but that’s not actually a serious problem. You see, if he has no general energy, he will be forced to bring out his reserve more and more frequently. The more often it is out, the more often you have chances to burn away at it and combat the natural regeneration.
But how do you know when he has brought out his reserve? Well, like any good magician you have to watch the hands. When your target switches to his reserve, he does so by switching weapons. When his weapons change, you can see this and burn away his energy. Remember that to change weapon sets, you have to be unaffected. That is, you cannot be casting and you cannot be knocked down. This is why gale is so efficient. When a target opens his reserve, you can burn them, then gale them. This will add in 4 seconds to the time his reserve is accessible by edenial skills (3 seconds of gale, 1 second for weapon change) and will allow you to burn away significantly more of his energy.
The other side of the coin: surviving edenial
Surviving edenial is tough, but it can be done. The very first gvg tactic used to beat edenial is kiting. If they deny you, you run away. If they follow too long they’ll break their lines and die for it. In this manner you can regenerate energy safely. There is a serious risk in doing this, however, as when you are running away you are not in range of your team or theirs, meaning you cannot perform your job any longer, be it healing or utility or damage. In HA, kiting really doesn’t mean anything. There aren’t any lines and nothing to define them, so you’re best off with the next tactic.
Reserve energy. Have it, use it, maximize it. Reserve energy is energy that is hidden away in weapon sets, so it can’t be touched until you activate it. When you activate it, it can be denied, but not until you’ve gotten those spells or skills off that you needed, in which case you can hide it again to regenerate safely.
What do I mean by maximize it? Well, your reserve energy set will be a certain maximum amount of energy. The reserve is the difference between that maximum and the maximum of your general energy. For example, say I have 30 energy. In my reserve set I can increase my maximum to 60. So, I have a reserve of 60-30=30 energy. This is where negative energy sets come into play. In general the intuitive thought is that in negative energy sets you are losing energy. This is false. What you are actually doing is trading general energy for the more valuable reserve energy. For example, if I take along a negative energy set that removes 10 energy, then my general energy can be brought to 20. That will give me a reserve of 40 (60-20=40) that the enemy edenialer has a difficult time affecting. This is obviously beneficial, and is the reason negative energy weaponry is so expensive!
The last option is energy management skills. These are skills whose sole purpose is to regain energy, or cause you to spend less. There are a variety of skills for this in every classes’ line. Every single GW class has lines in which energy management skills are available. Some are better than others, but that is not something I intend to get into here.
Obviously, to survive edenial, a person wants to use as many of these three tactics as they can. Any one of them will do a reasonable job, but they will be far more effective in conjunction with the others.
This guide was written in Dec. 2006 and may contain some out of date information, I have updated it briefly to remove blatant errors.
What this guide needs:
-Assessment of CURRENT popular edenial skills such as PowerLeak and ESurge
************************************************** ******
Guide originally posted by David Holtzman with editing by Ranger Nietzsche for dated information.
************************************************** ******
A basic guide to Energy Denial; or, you and your mana.
This guide will cover the two basic aspects of energy denial (abbreviated edenial): edenying someone, and being edenied.
What the heck is an edenialer anyways?
The purpose of the energy denialer is to, unsurprisingly, deny the enemy their energy. The reason for this is simple: a person has a set of skills. Except for signets (like rez sig or heal sig) and adrenaline based skills (like sever artery and eviscerate), those skills require a certain amount of energy to use. The premise is clear, if the enemy does not have the mana, he cannot power his skills. This turns him into a useless character.
So, how do you go about getting rid of someone’s energy? Well, the game has a number of skills that remove energy from people, specifically in the mesmer domination line and in the ranger no attribute line. These skills work in the same way as all skills: you target the person and activate the skill. There are two basic types of edenialer, the domination mesmer and the ranger edenialer.
************************************************** *******
Note:Dedicated Edenialers used to be popular, but edenial usually is now found as a utility part of a more general skill bar.
************************************************** *******
Who to target, and why.
Knowing who to target as an edenial player is just as important as effectively ednying someone. Edenying for example a signet mesmer will have roughly the same effect as not edenying anyone at all.
In terms of edenying someone, the best target is the one whom your skills are effective against, that represents the biggest threat. It is important to note that by threat, I do not necessarily mean the opposing player who deals the most damage. It is often the case that enemy healers are the biggest threat, as they are the ones allowing the enemy damage dealers to deal their damage.
The first thing an edenialer needs to do is determine the biggest threat. This is simply an act of judgment based on situational awareness. Some questions to ask include: What does the other team have? What concept is the team working on? Is there anyone especially vulnerable to edenial?
For example, it may be a good idea when facing a spike to start by denying their spikers. In a conditions build denying rangers may be the best choice, as they are very weak against edenial. Or, it may simply be most efficient to edeny monks first so as to get kills in quickly.
Above all though, the most important part of an edenialer’s job is communication. Especially when edenying with allied partners, it is extremely important to always know who you are on and who they are on, at all times. If you double up on a target you will effectively be wasting one of your edenialers. Instead of doing something useful, he’ll just be burning away the remnants of someone else’s targets.
Different types of energy
In general, the enemy will have two types of energy. His general energy, and his energy reserve. The general energy is the energy that is normally in his bar. This is what he’ll work off of in general, and it’s always accessible by edenial skills. The energy reserve is his emergency energy, pools of it hidden away in offhand switches and armor switches (though the latter of these is not common). As an edenialer your job is to stop your target from casting. How then are you supposed to stop your target if he can access his reserve energy? Well, this is where it starts to get tricky, and it is the reason gale is so effective (as mentioned above).
When an opponent switches to his reserve energy set, his reserve this then accessible by edenial skills. When this happens, you can use as many as possible before he hides his reserve again. It’s true that his reserve will regenerate to maximum capacity and you won’t be able to stop it, but that’s not actually a serious problem. You see, if he has no general energy, he will be forced to bring out his reserve more and more frequently. The more often it is out, the more often you have chances to burn away at it and combat the natural regeneration.
But how do you know when he has brought out his reserve? Well, like any good magician you have to watch the hands. When your target switches to his reserve, he does so by switching weapons. When his weapons change, you can see this and burn away his energy. Remember that to change weapon sets, you have to be unaffected. That is, you cannot be casting and you cannot be knocked down. This is why gale is so efficient. When a target opens his reserve, you can burn them, then gale them. This will add in 4 seconds to the time his reserve is accessible by edenial skills (3 seconds of gale, 1 second for weapon change) and will allow you to burn away significantly more of his energy.
The other side of the coin: surviving edenial
Surviving edenial is tough, but it can be done. The very first gvg tactic used to beat edenial is kiting. If they deny you, you run away. If they follow too long they’ll break their lines and die for it. In this manner you can regenerate energy safely. There is a serious risk in doing this, however, as when you are running away you are not in range of your team or theirs, meaning you cannot perform your job any longer, be it healing or utility or damage. In HA, kiting really doesn’t mean anything. There aren’t any lines and nothing to define them, so you’re best off with the next tactic.
Reserve energy. Have it, use it, maximize it. Reserve energy is energy that is hidden away in weapon sets, so it can’t be touched until you activate it. When you activate it, it can be denied, but not until you’ve gotten those spells or skills off that you needed, in which case you can hide it again to regenerate safely.
What do I mean by maximize it? Well, your reserve energy set will be a certain maximum amount of energy. The reserve is the difference between that maximum and the maximum of your general energy. For example, say I have 30 energy. In my reserve set I can increase my maximum to 60. So, I have a reserve of 60-30=30 energy. This is where negative energy sets come into play. In general the intuitive thought is that in negative energy sets you are losing energy. This is false. What you are actually doing is trading general energy for the more valuable reserve energy. For example, if I take along a negative energy set that removes 10 energy, then my general energy can be brought to 20. That will give me a reserve of 40 (60-20=40) that the enemy edenialer has a difficult time affecting. This is obviously beneficial, and is the reason negative energy weaponry is so expensive!
The last option is energy management skills. These are skills whose sole purpose is to regain energy, or cause you to spend less. There are a variety of skills for this in every classes’ line. Every single GW class has lines in which energy management skills are available. Some are better than others, but that is not something I intend to get into here.
Obviously, to survive edenial, a person wants to use as many of these three tactics as they can. Any one of them will do a reasonable job, but they will be far more effective in conjunction with the others.